Buy Low, Sell High

As I type this, I’m in a small, but expected depression as a disgruntled Mets fan living in Minnesota after today’s non-waiver trade deadline. In the middle of thermal packaging related activities, I saw deal and deal and deal swing by. All I get from both the teams that I follow most? A Kurt Suzuki extension. Oye. All that did was disgruntle me more, as I like Josmil Pinto quite a bit. I figured at least Bartolo Colon would get traded for some PTBL or a BoB (bucket o’ balls). Ah well.

On the other hand, if you’re a Tigers fan (I’m not a bandwagon A’s fan until the Mets are good, I decided today), you must be pretty excited. Drew Smyly wasn’t as dominating as a starter and Austin Jackson continued to short-come expectations. Instead you have an second ace, and can now appropriately consider Justin Verlander your number 3 or 4 or 5. [Jay’s Note: Or playoff closer?] Verlander has not been good, but he’s also been almost as unlucky as he’s been bad, or he’s hurt and isn’t saying anything/doesn’t know it.

July 1st, I noted the luckiest pitchers to date, but the one thing I didn’t do at that time was look at the pitcher’s luck/bad luck relative to their career rates. So for this post, for luck, I z-scored each pitcher’s luck stats relative to their career stats (homerun to flyball ratio, left on base% and BABIP). I weighed each z-score by the stats correlation to ERA. Therefore the luckies pitchers (using luck alone and excluding skill) as of 7/27 is: Josh Beckett, Jake Arrieta, Collin McHugh, Scott Kazmir, Garrett Richards, Zach Britton, Jordan Lyles, Drew Pomeranz, Dellin Betances, Alfredo Simon and Danny Duffy. Chris Young, Jason Hammel and Jesse Chavez (update: both Hammel and Chavez were rocked in their last start). However, this all excludes skill (contact rate, strikeout% minus walk% and ground ball to flyball ratio). Incorporating this, here are the actual luckiest pitchers as of 7/27:

There’s just over a week left on the season. Really, at this point, anything goes in non-keeper leagues. If you don’t need home runs because the schmohawk right behind you is 12 home runs away, but you desperately need steals, why are you still carrying Adam Dunn? Please, blog, may I have some more?

Your man, Grey, loves a piece of cheap tail like Ice Cube loves a nappy dugout. (In fact, I might love cheap tail more. This is totally debatable between Ice Cube and I. Anytime you want to grab a podium, Cube, and go word for word. Please, blog, may I have some more?

One guy you drafted in the 2nd round. The Ethier guy you drafted in the last round just so you’d have someone to draft when Rauch became the closer for the Nots. One guy will get drafted again in the first five rounds next year; the Ethier guy may be grabbed as a fifth outfielder then dropped when he’s doing a blahtoon with some other Dodgers schmohawk. Please, blog, may I have some more?

I liked Carlos Quentin going into spring of ’07. Whoa! You got the wrong year there, buddy? No, no I didn’t. I drafted Quentin in lots of leagues in ’07 because of his .940 OPS in the minors. He looked like the real deal. Please, blog, may I have some more?

Kila Ka’aihue will need a nickname if he plans on being as good as he looked in the minors this year. How about Misplaced Apostrophe? Nope. Ka’aihue hits home runs and, get this, doesn’t strikeout. Weird! Check this out, Tootsie Roll. Please, blog, may I have some more?

Usually on Friday we do our Buy and Sell feature, but with September 1st knocking on August’s door — August 31st is that you? Uh… No. August 30th? Nope. August 32nd? No, you nitwit! It’s September 1st! – it’s time we looked at September call ups. Please, blog, may I have some more?

Guess what time it is? No, not three o’clock. It’s time for this week’s fantasy baseball buy/sell thingiemajig. Dur! As we move closer to the end of the season, I wanted to take this opening section to point out some hard facts. Please, blog, may I have some more?

Delmon Young has 7 home runs for the season, but 3 in the last seven games. Mouth on the left side of the screen says, “Tor-.” Mouth on the right side of the screen says, “-rid.” …Torrid. Capital T, lowercase -orrid. Please, blog, may I have some more?

Recently, I realized I like my steals like I like my women, cheap. Sure, there’s girls out there that know which spork to eat their Hamburger Helper with, but real value is found in girls that can have fun in a bar with sawdust on the floor and Jimmy Buffett playing on the jukebox. Please, blog, may I have some more?